


'Tis The Season

by MyCedarChest



Category: Iron Man (Comic), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 17:58:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5173721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyCedarChest/pseuds/MyCedarChest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For everything there is a season.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Tis The Season

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the characters in this story belong to Marvel Comics and whoever else has current legal ownership of Iron Man at the moment. No infringement on any corporate, business, or individual’s rights is intended in any way. This story is not being written for profit, just for enjoyment.
> 
> Author’s Notes: Post IM3 Tony’s POV set in the time period between Chapters 7 and 8 of my story ‘The First Time’. Several references are made to events in those chapters in this story as well as to IM3

‘Tis The Season

Tony Stark was pacing back and forth in his Malibu mansion workshop as he watched Dummy and Butterfingers work. The bots were busily finishing up placing decorations on an artificial Christmas tree in the workshop. As Tony was waiting for them to finish, his pacing momentarily turned him away from the Bots, when suddenly a loud crash sounded throughout the workshop. Tony quickly turned around in order to see what the source of the noise was; hoping like hell that he wouldn’t find that one of the Christmas trees had been knocked over by his faithful but clumsy Bots.

“Hey guys!” he shouted stuffing a small blue box into his right pant pocket as he quickly walked over to where Dummy and U appeared to be actually fighting over the angel topper for the tree they were decorating. Their struggles had apparently knocked over a nearby metal trashcan which had landed next to the tree causing the loud crash. “No fighting.” He ordered as he gently pulled the angel out of both their pinchers. “Let me do that.” He insisted as he reached up to the top of the tree standing on his tip toes and placed the angel squarely on the pointed top. “There! All done. Now you two go pick up all of the boxes and take them back down to the sub basement.” He commanded as the two bots turned and whirled away from him. “You know what a neat freak Pepper is. I want to make sure the mansion is clean when she gets back from her trip this evening.”

Tony watched them leave after they each picked up several boxes and headed for the service elevator. He then turned around and walked slowly towards his desk. He tiredly sat down in his chair and heaved a huge sigh as his fingers began to move rapidly on the keyboard. He continued typing for several minutes his face serious and his eyes clearly focused. After tapping several keys in succession, he suddenly stopped typing. He looked up and over at one of the Christmas trees in his workshop and a small smile slowly appeared on his face as he thought of the origin of that particular tree. 

He quickly pulled himself back into the present. “Look that design over J and let me know what you think.” He told the AI looking up at the camera mounted to the ceiling over his work desk.

“At once, sir.” The AI replied. “And sir, telemetry from Ms. Potts’ jet indicates that her ETA has been moved up 30 minutes. Barring any adverse traffic conditions, Ms. Potts should arrive home no later than 8:00 PM Pacific Time.” He added cheerfully.

Tony’s smile grew wider. This had been her first overnight business trip since she moved in with him exactly one month ago today. She had been negotiating new supply contracts in Japan and China for the past five days. And every day he had somehow managed to miss her even more than the previous day. In fact, he had wished he had gone with her after only an hour of being left to himself in their Malibu mansion.

His concern for her safety had dramatically increased since they had become intimate, and he realized that his bond with her had grown so strong that it was almost physically painful to let her out of his sight in order for her to go into work at the SI main office in LA. So her first overnight trip out of town was exceptionally difficult for him. But he did his best to cover up his discomfort knowing just how much Pepper worried about both his emotional and physical well-being.

Going to bed by himself the first night she was away was a lot tougher than he would had ever imagined, and he had managed only a few hours of sleep that night. He didn’t fare much better the next nights either. But he knew that sleep was going to be the last thing on his mind tonight when she came home, so he had managed a few short naps during the day today in preparation for her return.

Left alone to his own thoughts about life in general and Pepper in particular, he had actually taken it upon himself to do a few chores around the mansion normally done by Pepper. He had even checked the mansion’s huge stack of incoming mail and was genuinely surprised at the large number of Christmas cards that he and Pepper had already received considering it was only the first week of December. Seeing all those Christmas cards had made him realize that this was to be his and Pepper’s first Christmas together. And even though he was still relatively new at this ‘relationship thing’ as he had previously labeled his efforts to court one Pepper Potts, he did have enough sense to know that their first Christmas as a couple needed to be special and memorable for them both. 

So he decided that this Christmas he would resurrect the Maria Stark’s Christmas trees tradition for the Malibu mansion. And since this was to be the first time he was going to actively participate in the holiday since his parents had died so many years ago, he had ordered the bots to retrieve all of his mother’s collection of artificial Christmas trees out of storage and install them in all of the common areas of the mansion. And when he realized that he still had five trees left over, he had instructed the Bots to place all five of them in and around his workshop.

His mother had absolutely loved Christmas trees, but had steadfastly refused to cut down a living tree in order to decorate for the holiday citing environmental reasons. And no amount of begging and pleading from Howard Stark had done anything to ever change her mind. So as the years had gone by, she had amassed a huge collection of artificial Christmas trees. Each tree had its own theme and unique decorations. 

So it had been up to Tony to make sure that the correct decorations were placed on the correct tree because he knew that his Bots would have no doubt created a huge mess if not properly supervised. And as he oversaw the erection and decoration of each tree, memories of Christmas pasts came flooding back to Tony. As a child he had always looked forward to the holiday season with his family. And Christmastime was his mother, Maria’s favorite time of the year, and her cheerful demeanor and famous cooking made it everyone else’s favorite time of the year too.

And while he was looking around in the sub basement for more Christmas trees, he spotted a box labeled ‘X-Mas Tunes’ which turned out was full of old jazz Christmas Songs from the ‘60’s and 70’s which his father had no doubt collected. He had carried those back up to his workshop himself, not trusting the Bots with the records. After inspection, he found the records to be in great condition with very few scratches. He was now set for mood music for the holiday season.

“Jarvis call Martin and make sure that dinner is delivered earlier.” He said pulling himself out of his memories of Christmas past. “Pepper’s going to be tired and cranky from being in meetings all week and in no mood to go out to eat.”

“Already done, sir.” Jarvis replied as Tony looked up at the camera and smiled sheepishly.

“Thanks, J.” he started “I know I’m probably going a little overboard here, but this is our one month anniversary dinner and I don’t want to screw it up.”

“Your caution is most wise considering you and Miss Potts’ past history.” Jarvis replied somewhat sarcastically causing Tony to cut his eyes sharply up towards the ceiling. “But I believe that Miss Potts will be quite delighted that you have decorated the mansion for the holiday season. I do know that the Christmas season is her favorite time of the year.” He finished enthusiastically. 

Still somewhat put out with Jarvis’ personal jab at him, Tony squinted menacingly at the camera. “How is it that you know so much about Miss Potts?”

“Miss Potts and I have had many conversations over the years, and she has always spoken with great affinity of the Christmas season and her happiness at spending that time of year with her family in Arizona.” Jarvis replied cheerfully.

Tony’s anger melted at the mention of Pepper’s family. “Yeah….well….Pepper and I are going to have our Christmas morning here with you guys and then we’re going to fly out to Arizona that afternoon and spend Christmas night and New Years with her family.”

“Congratulations, sir.” Jarvis said cheerfully “This will be the first time that you will get to meet the Potts clan.”

“Yep!” Tony agreed reaching in his right pants pocket and pulling out the blue box again to marvel at it, his face serious and his mind suddenly lost in the memories of earlier in the day.

About mid morning, as he was rummaging through various boxes trying to find all of his mother’s Christmas trees in the sub basement, he had discovered an old strong box with an ancient lock on it. This strong box had been buried deep within a box of old Christmas mantle decorations. It had obviously been mispacked so many years ago when Tony had hastefully ordered all of his parent’s belongings be put in storage after their untimely deaths. Pepper had been the one who had talked him into moving many of his parent’s belongings into his mansion years ago just before her second Christmas with him as his PA. But sadly neither Tony nor Pepper had ever had a reason to re-open any of the boxes including this one until now. Taking out his pen laser, he quickly cut the lock off of the box, taking care to save the lock so he could repair it later.

Inside the box he had found some very old parchment documents dating back over 150 years hand written in Italian script. Tony immediately sat down to read the documents suddenly fascinated by what he had found. Although he was fluent in Italian, there were some words he didn’t quite understand. But he was able to understand enough of the writing to realize that he was holding in his hands his great-great grandparent’s wedding announcements. He began to read the other documents as he slowly pieced together the contents of the box. The box contained the life history of his great-great grandparents including their marriage until their deaths.

As he continued to read the parchments he was stuck by the similarities between himself and his great-great grandfather. Apparently his great-great grandfather had not only been the town’s blacksmith but quite the inventor as well. And in looking at old photographs of the couple, he even physically resembled his Great-great grandfather. When he had finished reading all of the documents he smiled to himself at his good fortune in finding such valuable keepsakes here in the middle of box of generic Christmas ornaments. It was his own Christmas miracle of sorts. 

Wanting to empty the box, he looked into the box again and noticed that at the bottom of the box completely covered in tissue paper, was a small, blue velvet box still in fairly good shape considering its age. He carefully picked up the small box. As he slowly opened up the box, the loud creaking from its antique brass hinges filled the silence of the sub basement around him. Much to his surprise, within the box he found three gold rings: one engagement and two wedding bands. The engagement ring held within its band many small sapphires and diamonds topped with a pillow cut single diamond designed in the Italian renaissance style of the late 1800’s. The ring was absolutely gorgeous.

The second he laid eyes on the engagement ring he envisioned it on the left ring finger of a certain redhead whose beautiful blue eyes matched those sapphires perfectly. Each of the wedding bands had the words ‘Per Sempre Il Mio Amore’ which meant ‘forever my love’ engraved on the inside of each band. Those words immediately touched his soul knowing that he too had found his ‘forever’ love. He touched the rings tenderly with the tip of his right index finger instinctively knowing that his mother had saved these rings for him to have when he married. Inspired by his fortunate find, Tony immediately started formulating a plan which involved himself, his gorgeous live-in lover, and those rings.

“And if my plans work out the way I want them to on Christmas morning, I will be meeting Pepper’s family as her fiancé.” Tony announced suddenly, pulled back into the present as he opened the box turning it so Jarvis could zoom in on the rings.

“That is wonderful news, sir!” Jarvis replied happily. 

The Bots had immediately rolled over to where Tony was standing, beeping and chattering their approval of both the rings as well as Tony’s plans to propose to Miss Potts Christmas morning.

“The Bots are also quite pleased about your plans to marry Miss Potts, I might add.” Jarvis continued as Tony smiled at both Dummy and Butterfingers.

“I found these rings today while I was looking through some of Mom’s Christmas decorations.” He began to explain. “They belonged to my great-great grandparents. So I took the discovery as a sign that maybe I should finally pop the question to Pepper.”

“The find was truly fortuitous, sir.” Jarvis replied “And the ring designs are quite tasteful and pleasing to the eye without being gaudy. I am sure that Miss Potts will respond to your question favorably.”

“Hold on there, J” Tony cautioned “She may not say ‘yes’ to my proposal of marriage.” He ducked his head and snapped the box shut at the thought of her not wanting to marry him. He had a ton of emotional baggage in his life right now in the aftermath of the Chitauri invasion of New York, and he was firmly convinced that Pepper moving in with him had saved him from literally going crazy. He knew that he wasn’t exactly model husband material, and he also knew without a doubt that she could do so much better than him. It seemed the closer they became the more he found himself worrying that his own eccentricities would force her to leave him one day even though she had firmly committed herself to their relationship just as he had done.

“I am fairly certain that she will agree to your proposal, sir.” Jarvis said reassuringly “Miss Potts did agree to move into the mansion with us after all.”

Tony smiled up at the camera noting Jarvis’ use of the word ‘us’. “Yes, Miss Potts did agree to move in with us, didn’t she?” 

“Begging your pardon, sir, but Miss Potts has long since assumed a parental role in the Stark mansion.” Jarvis explained patiently “We have had several discussions on this subject and Miss Potts has always appeared flattered that the Bots as well as myself think of her in that role.”

Tony smiled broadly. “So you’re saying that Pepper has thought of herself as my wife before?”

“Not exactly, sir.” Jarvis corrected as Tony’s smile quickly faded from his face “What I am saying is that Miss Potts found it flattering that we thought of her as a surrogate mother for us.”

Tony was momentarily stunned at the mention of Pepper being a mother and he immediately thought about the past month of unprotected lovemaking with Pepper after each of them had agreed that they would try to have children together. “Now wait a minute. How did you know that Pepper and I are tying to have kids?” Tony suddenly blurted out in disbelief, knowing that their bedroom was off limits to Jarvis and the Bots except in emergencies. And thankfully there had been no emergencies at the mansion within the past month.

“We didn’t, sir, but that too is quite the wonderful news!” Jarvis replied with notable excitement as the Bots chirped and beeped noisily obviously very happy that they could possibly be expecting a sibling in their ‘family’ in the near future. Dummy began to whistle loudly and Tony quickly held up his hand in order to silence him.

Tony then shoved the blue box back into his right pants pocket as he started walking rapidly towards the stairwell. “That bit of news was supposed to stay between me and Pepper.” Tony said sternly. He quickly realized that he was actually embarrassed about sharing such information with them. It was almost like having the famous ‘birds and bees’ conversation with your kids and the thought actually unnerved him slightly. “And I do expect all of you to keep quiet about this conversation.”

“Why of course, sir.” Jarvis replied “Your secret is safe with us.” He then paused a second before continuing “Sir, I take it by your negative reaction that Ms. Potts is not yet with child.” Jarvis tentatively asked.

“Not yet.” Tony snapped back as he began to run up the stairs taking two steps at a time. ”But I’m working on it, OK?” he impatiently called out over his shoulder. Tony could definitely hear Dummy’s sad whine coming from the workshop as he rounded the top of the stairwell.

Tony quickly walked up to the second level of the mansion and down to the end of the hall entering the mansion’s high tech spa area. Next to the floor to ceiling windows sat a huge stone hot tub that he had designed to host parties in when he built the mansion. But surprisingly, the tub had hosted only a very few of those parties. After he became Iron Man, the hot tub had become a very valuable piece of physical therapy for him as his body recovered from various injuries. And in the past month, he and Pepper had spent some very memorable evenings in the hot tub together. 

So as part of his one month anniversary celebration, Tony thought that a long soak in the stone tub might be something that Pepper would like to do this evening after dinner. And he sincerely hoped that the combination of warm water and a massage with him as the masseuse of course would result in yet another memorable evening for them both. But as he looked in all of the supply cabinets in the spa area, he couldn’t find any scented candles. He knew that Pepper loved taking a bath by candlelight and he was going to make sure that there was plenty of candlelight surrounding them tonight.

“Hey, J” Tony called out “where are all the scented candles?”

“All candles are currently located within Flammable Locker Number 2, sir.” Jarvis replied.

Tony immediately turned and walked back downstairs to his workshop and into the storage room to stand in front of Flammable Locker Number 2. Pepper had always been a stickler for safety and she had managed to talk him into safety containment areas for the Malibu mansion many years ago. “Since when are the scented candles stored here, J.”

“Candles are considered flammables, sir.” The AI responded. “You know that Miss Potts is quite adamant when it comes to safety at the mansion.”

“Yeah, I know.” Tony replied with a small smile, as he opened up the locker and started to fill up an empty box with scented candles.

He finished loading the box and walked out of the storage room stopping by his work desk and sitting the box of candles on top of his desk. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small blue box containing the rings. “I don’t want Pepper to find this before I ask her to marry me Christmas morning.” He began as Butterfingers and Dummy rolled up in front of his desk. “So I want you two to make sure that nothing happens to this box.” He said hiding it in one of the hidden compartments in his desk. 

The Bots beeped solemnly at him. “The Bots will see to it that the box remains safe, sir.” Jarvis promised solemnly.

At exactly 8:05 PM, the Bentley rolled up into the mansion’s circle drive. Happy immediately got out of the front passenger’s door and quickly turned to open the rear door, extending out a hand to help Pepper out of the back seat. 

Tony quickly walked out to the car making a beeline for Pepper who was busy leaning over and talking to Jules, the SI security driver though her open door. Happy had already walked to the back of the car opening up the trunk in order to get Pepper’s luggage out. Just as Pepper stood up and turned away from the car Tony pulled her into a loving hug causing her to squeak in surprise.

“Tony!” she barely managed to get out just as he enveloped her in his strong arms.

“I’ve missed you so much, baby.” He whispered into her hair.

“And I’ve missed you too, sweetheart.” She whispered back to him very aware of their friendly but critical audience of two now watching them.

Happy began pulling her two rolling suitcases towards the house just behind the engrossed couple. “Where’s my hug?” Happy teased Tony as Jules chuckled at them from inside the car.

Pepper gently pulled out of his embrace with a small laugh, but Tony still managed to take her left hand into his right one not wanting to give up the feel of her skin just yet.

“That all depends.” Tony replied as they turned to walk after Happy their hands still joined “on whether or not you were able to get me some Xishan tea.”

“It took some trading, but I was able to get you ten bricks this trip.” Happy replied as he walked towards the front door. “But I’m gonna need some autographed pictures of Iron Man to send back in order to get more next time.”

“No problem on getting you the signed pics.” Tony replied cockily “I had no idea that my autographs have become valued as currency.”

“It is a frightening financial thought, isn’t it?” Pepper snarked and Happy chuckled loudly as the three of them continued to walk up the walkway. 

“Well….OK. Anyways thanks for the tea, Hap, but for snagging that much I think you deserve more than a hug.” Tony teased squeezing Pepper’s hand tenderly. “So come here big boy and let me lay a lip lock on you!”

“Don’t you even think about it.” Happy fired back immediately “Just because I am security chief now doesn’t mean that I won’t file a sexual harassment lawsuit on you.” He continued as Pepper started laughing in earnest “And I would probably make enough money off the lawsuit to move to Hawaii and raise pineapples for a living, so don’t tempt me.”

“I love you too, Hap.” Tony responded as the front door automatically opened to let the three of them into the mansion. 

“Just leave those there, Happy.” Pepper said with a smile indicating her suitcases “And thanks again for going with me on the trip.”

“No problem.” Happy replied turning to leave, raising up his right index finger to Tony in warning as Tony made a move to intercept him. “Seriously no kisses. It’s bad for my reputation.”

Tony started laughing knowing that he had been caught. “OK, OK no kisses.” He agreed, his face quickly becoming serious as he caught Happy’s eyes as he turned towards the door “Thanks for keeping an eye on Pepper. I owe you one, big guy.”

“No problem.” Happy replied with a small smile “See you on Monday.”

Jarvis closed the front door behind Happy after he walked out of it. “So good to have you back home, Miss Potts.” Jarvis announced cheerfully.

“So good to be back home. Thank you Jarvis.” Pepper replied letting go of Tony’s hand as she turned to look around, seeing the Christmas decorations for the first time. “Wow!” she exclaimed, a smile quickly lighting up her face. “You guys have really been busy while I was gone.” She walked over to the large fireplace and noticed the stockings hung there and she giggled as she read the names on the stockings.

“How did we do?” Tony asked quietly almost shyly.

Pepper turned back to face him, her smile growing even wider. “You did great!” she replied walking back to stand in front of him immediately pulling him into a fierce hug. “Really great! Thank you so much Tony!” She whispered into the side of his head near his right ear. “I know how hard this was for you to do.”

His arms immediately went around her pulling her closer to him. “I just wanted our first Christmas together to be special.” He whispered back to her and he immediately felt her arms pull him even tighter into her body.

“I love you so much, Tony.” She said her voice suddenly wavering.

He pulled back from her looking intently into her eyes as they began to mist over. “And I love you too, Pep.” He leaned in and kissed her tenderly on the lips, pulling back slightly after kiss. “So very, very much.”

She sniffled once and leaned her head forward until their foreheads touched gently. “And I have a feeling at our first Christmas together really will be special.”

They stood like that for several minutes, their arms re-wrapping around each other once again as they continued to hug. Suddenly a bluesy version of Jingle Bells started playing in the dining area.

“That’s my cue.” Tony said pulling back from her, a twinkle now clearly visible in his bourbon eyes.

“Just what are you up to?” Pepper teased as he took her by the hand and led her into the dining area. The table was set for two complete with their favorite bottle of wine, two wine glasses, and two silver domed plate covers sitting next to cutlery placed on folded napkins. A vase of red poinsettias adorned the top of the table. 

“Guido’s?” she asked as he led her to one of the chairs pulling it out for her.

“Guido’s.” he replied as she sat in the chair and he gently pushed it in for her.

He carefully leaned past her shoulder and pulled the dome plate cover off of her plate and took the cover with him as he walked around the table to his chair placing her plate cover down on the floor under the table. He quickly pulled off his own plate’s cover and put it down on the floor next to Pepper’s. Then he sat down looking across at her.

“Ti piace?” he asked in Italian taking her glass and pouring wine into it.

“Mi piace tantissimo!” she replied accepting the glass from him with a smile.

He immediately smiled back at her knowing that he was indeed making her very happy. They began to eat their dinner together in silence. They had known each other for so long that the silence between them while they ate was an easy, friendly one, punctuated with a few flirtatious glances from Pepper and some rather lustful stares from Tony.

Tony was hungry, but with the passing minutes they shared at dinner, his libido began to dull his appetite for food as he gazed upon his woman. As his desire continued to grow he found himself barely able to finish eating his food, so he was quite happy that Pepper had finished her dinner at about the same time he did. He was definitely ready for the next part of his planned evening for them both.

“The food was wonderful, Tony. Thank you for dinner.” She said as he walked around to pull out her chair for her. 

As she stood up he immediately turned her into his arms, quickly leaned over and kissed her on the lips heatedly. She was quick to respond to him and their kiss deepened even more before they finally had to break for air.

He suddenly picked her up bridal style and walked across the house to the stairs leading up to the spa with her securely held in his arms. “You’re quite welcome.” He replied as he began climbing the stairs. “I do have a few more things planned for us for tonight, though.”

“You do, huh?” she replied in a sultry tone caressing his cheek with her fingertips. “Like what?”

“You’ll see.” He replied carrying her through the doorway to the spa. 

As they approached the stone hot tub, the air became scented with the many candles that were lit around the tub. The shimmering of the candles produced an almost ethereal glow as the steam continued to rise from the hot tub.

“Oh, Tony” Pepper said quietly when she saw the hot tub “this is wonderful!”

Tony smiled softly at her as he gently lowered her to the floor. “I thought you might want to relax in the tub after your long trip. I wanted your welcome home to be special since it is our one month anniversary today.”

She smiled back at him and then slowly reached up and undid the top button on her blouse. “I am impressed that you remembered.” She teased moving her fingers down to the next button as Tony’s eyes immediately looked down from her face to intently track the movements of her hands. She smiled seductively at him as she uncovered the top of a beautiful red silk bra with the next button she undid. “I got you a little something special for our anniversary too, Tony.”

Tony stared in disbelief as her blouse then fell open to reveal a very dainty and very skimpy red bra made solely of what appeared to be a very extravagant style of lace. And he knew Pepper well enough to know that there was a matching set of panties underneath that business like skirt. Yes indeed, he definitely had the feeling now that the night was shaping up to be another memorable one in the hot tub for them both.

He remembered waking up with Pepper in his arms late the next morning and thinking how good of a night’s sleep that he had. What he didn’t know at the time was that it would be almost four and a half months later before he would have such a good night’s sleep again and that he would have it in of all places a hospital bed in Beijing with Pepper gently tucked into his side next to him.

After all of the tough times he and Pepper had been through since Christmas Eve, Tony felt like they had both turned some sort of page after his surgery to remove the arc reactor from his chest. A wave of optimism born of re-birth washed over Tony the next morning in the Beijing hospital, and he spent the rest of the day talking Pepper into rebuilding their mansion at Malibu. After discussing stability issues of the old mansion site, they agreed to rebuild the mansion on a different part of the property. Tony immediately began to work on redesigning the mansion with Pepper at his side helping him.

After recovering from his surgery, he and Pepper started flying out to Malibu every week from New York to oversee the building of their new mansion. Tony had appropriated private, secured space in the SI Los Angeles R&D building to design and build the new Stark tech that was to be installed in their new Malibu mansion once it was finished. Pepper knew that he needed the research space for ‘tinkering’ while she handled the more mundane aspects of overseeing the construction of their home every weekend. And she had been quite happy to see him take an interest in inventing again, knowing that was one of his true pleasures in life. He had already installed Jarvis at the site in order to help him with the manufacturing of his new tech, which pleased Pepper knowing that he had the AI to watch over him.

The salvage company hired by Pepper to recover debris and items from the waters below the cliff where the Malibu mansion had stood had recovered a surprising number of items intact from the ocean. And two of these surprises were Tony’s beloved bots. And after nearly coming to blows with the local Audi dealership over their inability to install a trailer hitch on his Audi R-8 E Tron, Tony promptly drove to one of the SI construction buildings at their LA office where he designed, built, and welded on his own trailer hitch, borrowed one of SI’s trailers, and drove out to Point Dume where the temporary salvage yard was located for mansion items pulled from the ocean. He then negotiated with the crane operator, who he found to be quite the Iron Man fan, to load his Bots into his trailer in exchange for autographing the man’s hard hat.

After returning to SI with Dummy and Butterfingers to his private space at SI R&D, Tony spent the next two weekends carefully cleaning and repairing both of the Bots. Tony was puzzled when he could not open one of the storage bins built into Dummy’s torso, so he just worked around the bin figuring eventually he would get the bin open. After numerous hours of work and Jarvis’ help, both of the Bots were restored completely

“Sir, both the Bots are now fully charged.” Jarvis reported as Tony whirled around in his chair to inspect the Bots, his bourbon eyes sparkling with happiness.

“You won’t tell anybody if I wake them with a kiss, will you J?” Tony teased as he walked towards the Bots.

“Perhaps Miss Potts should know, sir.” Jarvis snarked back at him as Tony chuckled loudly.

“Well it’s a good thing that Pepper isn’t here, because as much as she loves these two guys, she would try to wake them with a kiss and then I’d have to get jealous.” Tony replied with a huge smile. 

Tony stood in front of the two Bots with each of his hands on top of the Bots’ new cameras and he quickly took a deep breath. “How ‘bout we get our boys back on line, J.” he requested as he stared intently at the two robots in front of him.

“Yes, sir.” Jarvis replied cheerfully as the Bots began to make noise and move slightly.

Tony took a couple of steps back not sure how the Bots were going to react.

Within seconds, the two Bots began beeping cheerfully, their cameras moving around quickly as if trying to understand where they were.

“It’s OK, guys.” Tony said reassuringly “You’re at SI headquarters in LA. And you’re going to stay here nice and safe until Pepper and I get our new Malibu mansion built.”

At the mention of Pepper’s name, Dummy began to beep incessantly, holding his pinchered arm out to Butterfingers as if pleading with him.

Butterfingers immediately rolled over to Dummy, tapping gently on Dummy’s torso. Tony watched in amazement as the sealed compartment that he had been unable to open slid silently open with Butterfinger’s light touch. Butterfingers then reached into the open compartment gently extracting a small black plastic storage bag. Butterfingers then rolled over to Tony quickly handing the black bag to him.

“What on earth is this?” Tony asked walking over to a nearby desk and setting the black bag on the desktop. He produced a pocket knife quickly from his pants pocket and neatly sliced the bag open

“Well I’ll be damned!” Tony said in amazement as he pulled the small, blue velvet box out of the bag remembering the promise the Bots made about keeping the box safe for him just weeks before Christmas. “You guys did great!” Tony exclaimed reaching out to pat each of them affectionately. ”I really thought that these rings were lost in the ocean forever.”

The Bots both began to beep and chirp at the same time. “They wish to know if you still intend to propose to Miss Potts, sir.” Jarvis asked curiously as he translated for the Bots.

“Well…. I missed out on Christmas, New Years, and Valentines Day opportunities already.” Tony began, his eyes crinkling with happiness “But I promise all of you that I still intend to pop the question to my Lady Potts, and soon.” He continued “I just need to come up with another plan of action. After all, springtime ‘tis the season for love.”

“My advice, sir” Jarvis started, his tone characteristically sarcastic “is that you try not to involve rabbits in this new proposal plan of yours.”

Tony visibly winced upon Jarvis mentioning the ‘r’ word to him. “Duly noted, J. Duly noted.”


End file.
